1- Joseph StalinThe mustachioed Georgian and Blatter started their careers in much the same way: in obscure bureaucratic posts. Stalin became general secretary of the Communist Party, and Blatter general secretary of FIFA. In the 1920s, it was fashionable among Soviet communists to dismiss Stalin as just a boring paper shuffler, while Trotsky was seen as the fascinating ideas man.

But Stalin gained control of the party from the inside, knew better than anyone where the power and the money was, and ended up purging Trotsky, just as Blatter has now purged Bin Hammam. Stalin eventually died in his bed in his 70s, still in control after 30 years. The resemblance between Blatter and Stalin also seems to have occurred to Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a staunch advocate of both men.

2- P.W. Botha, the South African president at the end of apartheidBlatter’s defiant speech from last Monday ("Crisis? What is a crisis?"), which seemed to blame all of FIFA’s problems on the people who dared point them out, echoed Botha’s famous rant against the African National Congress: "I’ve been lenient and patient! Don’t push us too far! Don’t push us too far!"

The parallels are almost spooky: the bespectacled, bald, angry septuagenarian who makes English sound like a newly invented Teutonic language clinging implausibly to claims of civilized values, completely failing to grasp which way history was moving.

3- Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian communist dictator Blatter’s press conference last week, when he was heckled and laughed at by journalists, nicely evoked Ceaucescu’s last public appearance in December 1989. Back then, corrupt communist dictators were falling just as rapidly as corrupt soccer officials are now, but Ceaucescu thought that everything in Romania was still fine. He appeared on the balcony of the Central Committee building to be cheered by a paid crowd. Then, suddenly, the crowd started to boo and heckle him. In the TV footage Ceaucescu looks as startled as Blatter did last Monday. Where, to use Blatter’s term, was "respect"? And then on Christmas Day 1989, Ceaucescu’s own state television broadcast his execution.

Maybe Sepp Blatter is taking his cues from one of his contemporaries...